Business is triage

Hire experienced professionals. Staff every project completely. Get the best tools. Use the highest quality materials. Have independent consultants and auditors verify everything. Take the time to do things right, and never settle for second-best.

If leadership is the art of delegation, then everyone can lead a product launch, a construction project, or a rocket launch.

All you need to succeed is a pile of clichés (“Never settle for second best,” “Quality is job one,” “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,” etc.) and an even bigger pile of cash.

Fast Company had a great article years ago about software development for the Space Shuttle. There are some interesting and even useful lessons about the process that kept software errors to 1 in 420,000 lines of code.

The problem with applying these lessons to my business: at that point they’d been working on the code for 22 years and were still spending $35 million a year on maintaining it. I can’t afford government-level quality. (And I mean that in every way it can be interpreted…)

Business is triage. Resources are limited and competition is intense, and the never-ending job of a business leader is deciding what we can get along without and how good something has to be before we ship it.

Sometimes a well-meaning employee asks when we’re going to “get through this phase” — stop changing direction quickly, stop taking on big projects with small teams, stop shipping things as soon as they are market-viable, etc.

The answer is “never, I hope.” Because a business that isn’t in triage mode is a business on its way out of business.

Comments

From my experience I would agree that you need to be on the bleeding edge, but to say that triage is required is an excuse cover up a poor execution usually due to a lack of planning. Having the right people executing the release avoids the need for triage. You may need an ice pack or a band-aid, but if you need triage and you are having collateral damage internally or externally, then the business is not being run properly.